By ANDREW KEH

September 7, 2013

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica — The United States players arrived here this week exuding confidence, chests ever-so-slightly puffed, as they carried a 12-game winning streak into this crucial World Cup qualifying match.

But their strut turned to a stagger almost as soon as a ball was kicked Friday. The Americans spoke this week about attacking, about gunning for a win, to move closer to next summer’s World Cup. Instead, a determined Costa Rica team humbled them, 3-1, inside a dizzyingly loud National Stadium.

Afterward, the United States remained stuck at 13 points after seven games, falling to second place behind Costa Rica, which now has 14. The Americans will play Mexico on Tuesday in Columbus, Ohio, and Mexico, which had already been struggling in its qualifying campaign, will surely be hungry after a stunning 2-1 home loss to Honduras on Friday.

The Americans’ qualification hopes did not deflate much, but their pride most likely did.

“It’s never easy,” Landon Donovan said about qualifying from the region. “It’s always unpredictable. There are ups and downs. We’ve been on a lot of ups, and now this is a down. We’re going to see how we recover. We’re going to see what we’re made of.”

Coach Jurgen Klinsmann arrayed his players into a 4-2-3-1, using Donovan — who was playing his first qualifying match since June 2012, before his three-month wintertime sabbatical — as a central playmaker and the captain Clint Dempsey, playing his 100th international game, as a lone striker. It should have been the team’s strongest lineup this year.

But the team took a huge hit before the game, when the midfield linchpin Michael Bradley sprained his left ankle during warm-ups. A heavy thunderstorm, the sort that sends car alarms squealing, started shortly after midday and persisted until shortly before kickoff, leaving the field soft and slick. While taking a shot, Bradley lost his footing and rolled over his ankle, which swelled right away.

Bradley’s status for Tuesday’s game against Mexico was unclear — he will have a magnetic resonance imaging exam Saturday — but it did not seem promising when he limped on crutches to the team bus late Friday night.

It was an ominous beginning, and things only got worse. The capacity crowd of about 35,000 at the National Stadium blared horns, booed “The Star-Spangled Banner” and created a foreboding atmosphere to rival the ones produced at the Estadio Ricardo Saprissa Aymá, the team’s old home.

The fans were then sent into ecstasy within the first two minutes, when Johnny Acosta slipped free on a corner kick and sent a glancing header inside the near post to give Costa Rica a stunning early lead. Seven minutes later, Celso Borges charged through the middle to elevate and snap his forehead onto Yeltsin Tejada’s floating cross from the left, beating goalkeeper Tim Howard to make it 2-0.

“Anytime you give up a goal that early, or two goals that early, there’s no coming back,” Howard said.

Klinsmann speculated that Bradley’s sudden absence unnerved the team.

Donovan concurred: “This team has in large part been built around Michael, and in my opinion, him and Clint have been the two most influential players over the last few years, so that hurts,” Donovan said. “You lose a leader. You lose a good player. You lose a lot of stability. But that doesn’t account for how we started.”

The Americans gathered themselves somewhat. Minutes before halftime, Fabian Johnson ghosted behind the Costa Rican back line and was chopped down by goalkeeper Keylor Navas. The foul yielded a yellow card for Navas and a penalty kick for the Americans. Dempsey stepped to the spot and drilled the ball to Navas’s left, cutting the deficit to 2-1.

The optimism was fleeting. The United States failed to break through again, and in the 75th minute, Joel Campbell caught up to a thumped clearance and won a footrace to the Americans’ goal, where he beat Howard one-on-one to deliver a final, humbling blow.

“I thought a draw was a strong possibility because of the chances we created,” said Dempsey, who fired a shot off the crossbar during the Americans’ second-half surge. “We’ve got to go back and get things done at home.”

That task became considerably more difficult as the game went on. Eight players carried yellow cards into the match, and three — defenders Geoff Cameron and Matt Besler and striker Jozy Altidore — picked up another up during Friday’s game, meaning they will be suspended and unavailable Tuesday.

Klinsmann rued all three, but said Altidore’s — which was given to him during stoppage time after he bumped a Costa Rican player — was “absolutely not necessary.”

It was a sour end to a frustrating night, and the United States team, which nurtured a soaring self-belief over a 12-game run, felt its swagger evaporate into the Costa Rican night.

“We’ve been playing unbelievable the last four or five months,” Howard said. “We’ve dug out some results we shouldn’t have. Tonight, maybe it was a bridge too far.”